Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. I was reading a memoir by a combat veteran today who served in Afghanistan and he had this to say: "I remember watching the movie Saving Private Ryan with him [my dad] and all I wanted after that was to be a...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Now it's take and take and takeover, takeover It's all take and never give All these trumped up towers They're just golden showers Where are people supposed to live? Don Henley, “Gimme What You Got” (1989)...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. As Elon Musk runs amok in the U.S. government, claiming to work for government efficiency, I’ve yet to see him tackle the elephant in the room: the Pentagon budget. That budget, nominally at $900 billion,...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. I’m a sports fan. And last weekend I caught the epic clash between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, once again won by the Chiefs and the magical Patrick Mahomes. Yet seemingly no big NFL game is...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Isn’t it high time we “augment” our nuclear force “posture”? Shouldn’t we fight to achieve peace through nuclear “strength” and “deterrence”? Isn’t it smart to “refurbish, rebuild, and modernize” the nuclear...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Back in August of 2014, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch on the American cult of bombing. The Air Force’s new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, was still on the drawing board a decade ago. The Air Force wanted...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. A few days ago, I posted the following comment to a fine article that addressed America’s nuclear triad and the reality that we really only need the Navy’s nuclear submarine force for deterrence: My old...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Yesterday, the Merchants of Death Tribunal concluded with a verdict of “guilty” for all those U.S. dealers and exporters of weapons globally. Yes, the merchants of death are guilty as sin, even as they account...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. If one side is armed with cap guns and the other with bazookas, would we call that a “war” between roughly equal powers? I thought of this as I turned to Antiwar.com to see that President Biden has approved...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission. Attacks on Iran are already being explored by the incoming Trump administration, which put me to mind of this article I wrote in 2016. Collectively, the U.S. government and its apparatus is the world’s biggest...
